I am on the road today but as they say...the show must go on so here's a special guest post by Glenn Wood.....
For my Middle School book The Brain Sucker my
main bad guy, Lester Smythe, is an evil genius who invents a machine designed
to suck the goodness out of kids. He despises goodness and manners and wants to
create a world where these things no longer exist. Sounds a bit far-fetched but
the original idea came to me after observing a couple of children who appeared
to have had any sense of good behaviour completely removed from their systems.
It was like they had indeed been Brain Sucked.
This got me thinking. What if villains from
other stories had succeeded in their dastardly plans?
The world would be overrun by Dementors, The
Hunger Games would be a yearly occurrence, the lost boys would still be lost,
Christmas would be nowhere to be seen thanks to the Grinch, and those 101 Dalmatian
puppies would have been converted into a fashion accessory for Cruella.
Fortunately for humankind (and puppies) there
are a host of plucky kids out there that won’t allow evil to triumph. This
brings me to a dilemma often faced by authors (well, by me anyway) – how to
make your heroic characters as interesting as the fiendish ones. Let’s face it,
nasty characters are the most fun to write. You can let your dark side run riot
and say and do things that, in the real world, would lead to imprisonment or detention
in a rubber room. Whereas your protagonists have to be essentially good and
this can translate as a little vanilla.
I was very aware of this pitfall when
developing The Brain Sucker so I worked hard to ensure that my heroes could not
only foot it with the bad guys but were interesting in their own right. Callum
is a gutsy but annoyingly stubborn boy who was born with a spinal defect and is
confined to a wheelchair. This doesn’t slow him down though because his
mechanically brilliant friend Sophie has re-engineered his wheelchair to do
things not in the manufacturer’s handbook. And to ensure things are never
boring, Callum and Sophie are both friends with Jinx, the world’s unluckiest
boy. There’s never a dull moment when they are together and they are just the
trio to take on insane Lester and his league of thuggish henchmen. Just as well
too because I have seen first-hand what can happen when children appear to have
had their goodness removed.
It’s not pretty.
For more information about Glenn Wood, visit his
website http://www.glennwoodauthor.com and
you can get a copy of The Brain Sucker at Amazon.
Sounds like a good book for your young'uns!
Be sure and come back by for Saturday Spotlight and next week to see what treasures we find, thoughts we think and book/author we shine the spotlight on!
Until later...take care & God Bless.
PamT
4 comments:
Congrats, Glenn! I enjoy writing for YA and middle grades myself as well as adults.
Children are such enthusiastic readers.
I, too, write YA. Your book sounds awesome! Best of luck!
I agree that many children these days appear to have their goodness sucked out. Like a first grader I ran into the other day. When I said, "Honey, your shoelace is undone. You might want to tie that up so you don't trip," she turned around to give me a baleful look (1st grade!) and said caustically, "I'm. fine." Unfortunately I think they get it from their parents, sometimes, because I find that fewer and fewer adults respond with, "You're welcome," when I tell them "thank you." They may just be little things, but they produce those slippery slopes that lead to bullying and all kinds of awful behavior. We just need to be kind to one another.
Don't ya just love my soapbox? Perty, ain't it?
Anyway--I love your cast of characters and this sounds like a good read for adults and children alike. Thanks for sharing it with us in this fun post!
Your post can become more thought-provoking if you consider what would have happened in case villains from other stories succeeded. Thus, it is quite a scenery as all the Dementors of the world, one season of the Hunger Games after another and Christmas being stolen by Grinch. This makes readers to think about good and evil in different fictional worlds.
Moreover, when faced with an unforeseen emergency while driving on the road it becomes necessary to have reliable professional towing services to help navigate such challenges successfully. Similarly, like some worlds that are protected from becoming a villain’s paradise these services provide security and support during real life circumstances.
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